Browse Books
Material Media-Making in the Digital Age
There is now no shortage of media for us to consume from streaming services and video-on-demand to social media and everything else besides. This has changed the way media scholars think about the production and reception of media. Missing from these conversations though is the maker: in particular the maker who has the power to produce media in their pocket.
How might one craft a personal media-making practice that is thoughtful and considerate of the tools and materials at one's disposal? This is the core question of this original new book. Exploring a number of media-making tools and processes like drones and vlogging as well as thinking through time editing sound and the stream Binns looks out over the current media landscape in order to understand his own media practice.
The result is a personal journey through media theory history and technology furnished with practical exercises for teachers students professionals and enthusiasts: a unique combination of theory and practice written in a highly personal and personable style that is engaging and refreshing.
This book will enable readers to understand how a personal creative practice might unlock deeper thinking about media and its place in the world.
The primary readership will be among academics researchers and students in the creative arts as well as practitioners of creative arts including sound designers cinematographers and social media content producers.
Designed for classroom use this will be of particular importance for undergraduate students of film production and may also be of interest to students at MA level particularly on the growing number of courses that specifically offer a blend of theory and practice. The highly accessible writing style may also mean that it can be taken up for high school courses on film and production.
It will also be of interest to academics delivering these courses and to researchers and scholars of new media and digital cinema.
Modelling International Collaborations in Art Education
Based on over a decade of collective teaching this volume explores the hybrid use of online and in-person collaboration as a means of offering international experience to university-level arts students. Chapters articulate a collective learning based on the experiences of the International Art Collaborations Network (INTAC) Collective Body group and related programs which the authors and contributors have participated in as educators and students.
Illustrated with photographs screenshots and student projects the book inspires reflection on teaching methodologies and student artmaking strategies across cultures and languages. Pedagogical and methodological topics trace an evolution of curricular approaches and use of evolving online platforms. Examples of themes and visual strategies demonstrate the power of student-directed collaborative learning. Diverse voices have been gathered through research conducted with educators and alumni connected to INTAC providing perspectives on working collaboratively in a global context.
Student projects exemplify responses to the challenges of communication and creation that come with distanced artistic partnership. Chapters end with suggested points for conversation whether between educators students of art education or students entering collaborations. Although based on experiences in the visual arts the ideas and methods are applicable to others engaging in inter-institutional education or online collaborative practices.
Fully illustrated with examples of collaborative art projects photographs screenshots diagrams and posters.
Multimodal Comics
Comics have always embraced a diversity of formats existing in complex relationships to other media and been dynamic in their response to new technologies and means of distribution. This collection explores interactions between comics other media and technologies employing a wide range of theoretical and critical perspectives.
By focusing on key critical concepts within multimodality (transmediality adaptation intertextuality) and addressing multiple platforms and media (digital analogue music prose linguistics graphics) it expands and develops existing comics theory and also addresses multiple other media and disciplines.
Over the last decade Studies in Comics has been at the forefront of international research in comics. This volume showcases some of the best research to appear in the journal. In so doing it demonstrates the evolution of Comics Studies over the last decade and shows how this research field has engaged with various media and technologies in a continuously evolving artistic and production environment. The theme of multimodality is particularly apt since media and technologies have changed significantly during this period. The collection will thus give a view of the ways in which comics scholars have engaged with multimodality during a time when “modes” were continually changing.
The Making of Modern Muslim Selves through Architecture
This collection seeks to explore alternative definitions of bounded identities facilitating new approaches to spatial and architectural forms. Taking as its starting point the emergence of a new sense of ‘boundary’ emerged from the post-19th century dissolution of large heterogeneous empires into a mosaic of nation-states in the Islamic world. This new sense of boundaries has not only determined the ways in which we imagine and construct the idea of modern citizenship but also redefines relationships between the nation citizenship cities and architecture.
It brings critical perspectives to our understanding of the interrelation between the accumulated flows and the evolving concepts of boundary in predominantly Muslim societies and within the global Muslim diaspora. Essays in this book seeks to investigate how architecture mediates the creation and deployment of boundaries and boundedness that have been devised to define enable obstruct accumulate and/or control flows able to disrupt bounded territories or identities.
More generally the book explores how architecture might be considered as a means to understand the relationship between flows and boundaries and its implication of defining modern self. The essays in this volume collectively address how the construction of self is primarily a spatial event and operated within the crucial nexus of power-knowledge-space.
Contributors investigate how architecture mediates the creation and deployment of boundaries and boundedness how architecture might be considered as a means to understand the relationship between flows and boundaries and its implications for how we define the modern self.
Part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series.
Media Materialities
Provides new perspectives on the increasingly complex relationships between media forms and formats materiality and meaning. Drawing on a range of qualitative methodologies our consideration of the materiality of media is structured around three overarching concepts: form – the physical qualities of objects and the meanings which extend from them; format – objects considered in relation to the protocols which govern their use and the meanings and practices which stem from them; and ephemeral meaning – the ways in which media artefacts are captured transformed and redefined through changing social cultural and technological values.
Each section includes empirical chapters which provide expansive discussions of perspectives on media and materiality. It considers a range of media artefacts such as 8mm film board games maps videogames cassette tapes transistor radios and Twitter amongst others. These are punctuated with a number of short takes – less formal often personal takes exploring the meanings of media in context.
We seek to consider the materialities which emerge across the broad and variegated range of the term’s use and to create spaces for conversation and debate about the implications that this plurality of material meanings might have for the study of study of media culture and society.
Music Making and Civic Imagination
In a world facing multiple existential crises music might be seen as little more than a distraction. However in this synthesis of ideas developed over a decade a timely re-appraisal of the potential of musicing for human flourishing is presented emphasising its role in the history of human evolution alongside its potential as a resource for sustainable development.
A holistic philosophy of music is outlined which recognises the complex web of meaning which spreads across complementary musical dimensions of performance and participation whilst emphasising the ‘paramusical’ benefits which arise from both. Highlighting the notion that the social bonds which arise from musicing share much of the neurobiological underpinnings of attachment and love musicing is presented as a resource with the potential for facilitating ethical human connection.
The humanistic values which are thereby materialised during musicing – love reciprocity and justice – form the experiential grounds for inhabiting alternative social realities. The book addresses how such a holistic philosophy of music might be implemented in practice drawing on the author’s professional praxis as a performer educator community musician composer and researcher in particular their experience of musician education at Sage Gateshead Royal College of Music and Trinity-Laban Conservatoire in the UK.
Media Pluralism and Online News
The book arises from an international research project that explores the future of media pluralism policies for online news. It investigates the latest European policies and techniques for regulatory intervention and examines the consequences of innovative news practices asking ‘How will automation of news affect public opinion in the age of social media platforms and what are the consequences?’
In Media Pluralism and Online News the authors make the argument that there is an urgent need for revitalised thinking for a media policy agenda to deal with the trends to platform power and concentrated media power which is an ongoing global risk to public interest journalism.
In the transition to a media landscape increasingly dominated by broadband internet distribution and the dominance of US-centric new media behemoths Google Facebook Apple Amazon and Netflix the book investigates measures that can be taken to reduce this ongoing march of concentration and the attenuation of media voices.
Securing the public interest in a vibrant and sustainable news media sector will require that merger decisions assess whether there is a ‘reduction in diversity’ -- calling for a new public interest test and a more expansive policy focus than in the past. This would include consideration of the sustainability of local businesses; the encouragement of original and local news content; quality of content in terms of the promotion of news standards; and new modes of delivery and consumption including the ‘automated curation’ of news content by digital platforms.
Media Pluralism and Online News
The book arises from an international research project that explores the future of media pluralism policies for online news. It investigates the latest European policies and techniques for regulatory intervention and examines the consequences of innovative news practices asking ‘How will automation of news affect public opinion in the age of social media platforms and what are the consequences?’
In Media Pluralism and Online News the authors make the argument that there is an urgent need for revitalised thinking for a media policy agenda to deal with the trends to platform power and concentrated media power which is an ongoing global risk to public interest journalism.
In the transition to a media landscape increasingly dominated by broadband internet distribution and the dominance of US-centric new media behemoths Google Facebook Apple Amazon and Netflix the book investigates measures that can be taken to reduce this ongoing march of concentration and the attenuation of media voices.
Securing the public interest in a vibrant and sustainable news media sector will require that merger decisions assess whether there is a ‘reduction in diversity’ -- calling for a new public interest test and a more expansive policy focus than in the past. This would include consideration of the sustainability of local businesses; the encouragement of original and local news content; quality of content in terms of the promotion of news standards; and new modes of delivery and consumption including the ‘automated curation’ of news content by digital platforms.
Making Sense of Medicine
Medical knowledge manifests in materials and materials are integral to the reproduction of medical knowledge. From the novice student to the expert practitioner those who study and work in and around medicine rely on material guidance in their everyday practice and as they seek to further their craft.
Students just as experts pore over textbooks photographs and films. They put up and copy down chalkboard illustrations manipulate plastic models and inspect organic specimens fixed in formalin. They pass through grand university libraries and try not to contaminate anything in cramped surgical theatres. Students just as experts learn within an expansive material culture of medicine they learn from explicitly educative materials from the workaday tools used for diagnosis and in treatment they learn in everyday spaces and as part of sprawling infrastructures. While the specific constellation of material varies across time and space many materials have remained constant key actors in the spread of medical practices and in the steady global expansion of biomedical frameworks of health and disease. This collection focuses on the materials objects tools and technologies which facilitate the reproduction of medical knowledge and often reify understandings of medical science.
The training of doctors is changing rapidly in response to technological development as well to the evolving needs and expectations of patients. Medical schools are beginning to respond to these challenges through curricula redesign and the purchase or endorsement of new teaching aids simulations and pedagogies. Often this means that medical schools are embracing the digital at the expense of older teaching materials. Medical education is at a critical juncture and there is momentum to radically rethink its approaches.
This collection offers a reflection on these challenges by presenting an innovative and expansive overview of the role of materiality in the training of doctors and in the social reproduction of medicine in general. Experimental in form and with ethnographic museological and historical cases and traces from around the world this edited volume is the first to fully explore the matter of medical education in the modern world. Supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
An academic text it will be most relevant to academics and graduate students in the fields of health and material culture but will also have a wider readership with those working on medical education and knowledge and medical history
The Many Meanings of Mina
Mina (Anna Maria Mazzini born Lombardy 1940) is an Italian popular music icon who throughout her sixty-year-long career has come to represent a range of diverse meanings. She is one of the best-loved popular music stars in Italy and abroad with a large fan base across Europe Asia and South America. Her career began in the late 1950s and reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s.
Despite having retired from public appearances at the end of the 1970s Mina remains popular and successful today and continues to release new albums that consistently debut in the number one spot of the Italian charts. As an Italian popular music star she is exemplary of the way in which stardom is constructed by different media and has come to represent different local and global identities values ideologies and ways of behaving. This is because whilst Mina is first and foremost a popular music star she has also been a film star and a television personality during different phases of her career. She has advertised successful Italian brands on television and she has been a magazine writer and agony aunt. Her star persona is the product of her work in many different areas as well as of the promotional materials and commentaries that are produced in response to her work.
This book explores these different ‘mediums’ that Mina has been involved in and which have shaped her career and significance. It traces the process by which she has come to embody a diverse range of meanings that reveal something of the values and ideals at work within contemporary Italian society.
Rachel Haworth is a researcher of Italian popular music and culture of the twentieth century and Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Hull UK.
The primary market for this book is students and academics in the following subject areas: Italian Studies; Popular Music Studies; Stardom and Celebrity Studies; Media Studies; Cultural History. Also scholars and researchers working on music divas.
The book is suitable for use on courses and modules at all undergraduate and postgraduate levels which deal with Italian cultural studies Italy’s post-war history and the role of women in Italy as well as the wider study of popular music and the construction of stardom and celebrity.
The secondary audience for this book will be fans of Mina around the world accessibly written this will appeal to fans in Italy who are able to read in English.
The Music of Nobuo Uematsu in the Final Fantasy Series
Nobuo Uematsu is one of the most influential Japanese composers of the current age. One of Japan’s most beloved living composers he has been composing music for the popular franchise since 1987 inspiring a new generation of classical music fans and named by Time Magazine as an ‘innovator’ of the new wave of music.
Sometimes described as the Beethoven of video game music Nobuo Uematsu has built his career and reputation from his soundtracks to the enduring Final Fantasy series of video games which are notable for their remarkable cinematic feel.
Classic FM radio describes Nobuo as ‘part John Williams part Wagnerian leitmotif part new-age soundscaper – and a legend in his own right’. He has so far appeared five times in the top 20 of the annual Classic FM Hall of Fame voted for by listeners.
This is the first book-length study on the music of Uematsu. It takes a variety of different analytical approaches to his music. It offers readers interested in ludomusicology (the study of and research into video game music) a variety of ways in which to understand Uematsu’s compositional process and the role that video game music has in the overall gaming experience.
Those interested in Uematsu’s music will gain a greater appreciation and understanding of his compositional processes and his interaction with musical narrative and those interested in ludomusicology in general will be shown various methodologies that can be applied to a single composer. Those interested in composing for video games or movies will also be given insight into how they might compose for a narrative themselves.
Professional musicians will gain deeper insight into the music from selected games in the series as each chapter applies traditional theoretical and musicological methodologies to selected games from the series. It my also be a useful educational resource for use in their own studies by student and amateur musicians.
Foreword by William Gibbons associate professor of musicology at Texas Christian University. Editor Richard Anatone is a professor of music theory at Prince George's Community College in Largo Maryland.
It will be a valuable resource for ludomusicologists as well as academics from a variety of disciplines who work in popular music and culture film and visual media and subjects traditionally marginalized by the Western 'Classical' canon. It will also be of interest to fans of the Final Fantasy series both inside and outside of academia and to composers of video game music.
It will also appeal to readers interested in the business and marketing side of the video game industry and who want to learn from the successes of live video game concerts and how symbolism and thematic interplay aids in drawing gamers’ attention to soundtracks and concerts of video game music.
Game developers will learn how to recognize potential composers and compositional approaches that will aid in storytelling fandom and gamer immersion.
General video game historians who want to learn more about Square’s early years and eventual transition into a powerhouse development company will also find much to interest them.
While there have been several edited collections in the subdiscipline of ludomusicology this is the first book to address a composer’s oeuvre as the main subject. It brings together a variety of methodologies and voices on the subject and has potential to become a model for future composer-focused studies.
Men, War and Film
The Calling Blighty series of films produced by the Combined Kinematograph Service produced towards the end of the Second World War were one-reel films in which soldiers gave short spoken messages to the camera as a means of connecting the front line and the home front. These are the first ever films where men speak openly in their regional accents and they have profound meaning for remembrance documentary representation and the ecology of film in wartime.
Of the 400 films (or ‘issues’) made 64 survive. Each of those contained around 25 individual messages. Men – and a very few women - from a particular city town or region were grouped together for the films to make regional screenings back in UK cinemas and town halls possible. Personnel from all three services are featured but the men are predominantly from the army units. Screenings took place at a cinema in the subjects’ local area and were usually organised by the regional Army Welfare Committee. The names and addresses of those to be invited to the screenings were sent to the UK along with the films.
Until now these films have barely been researched and yet are a valuable source of social history as well as representing a different mode from the mainstream of British wartime documentary. This book expands the history of Calling Blighty and places it in a broader context both past and present. New research reveals the origins of the film series and draws comparisons with written and oral contemporary sources.
Steve Hawley is an artist/filmmaker whose work has been screened worldwide and has collaborated closely with the North West Film Archive UK. He is emeritus professor at the Manchester Metropolitan University UK.
Using memoirs and diaries Steve Hawley has researched the roles in the Burma campaign of participants in the surviving films and traced over 160 of the families of the men – and two men still alive – and recreated these wartime screenings.
Hawley’s book is part description of the films part reclamation of a largely unknown genre of wartime filmmaking partly an account of the Burma campaign and partly a discussion of war and memory. Engagingly and warmly written.
It will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the areas of war studies especially those specializing in the social rather than military history of warfare and historians of British wartime cinema and documentary. Also useful for an undergraduate audience in history media/film studies.
Potential for readers with an interest in the Second World War particularly the war in Burma and those with an interest in family history of the period.
The Music Diva Spectacle
This original new book has a unique focus on diva camp as popular music praxis. The author analyses case studies of diva concert tour shows in order to present a performance studies reading of camp the culture-sharing process of production and audience reception. Detailed case studies include contemporary stars Madonna Kylie Beyoncé Lady Gaga and a look at audience drag.
The book contains detailed descriptions of artists’ performances along with the analysis of exciting and popular contemporary performers. The emphasis on camp is particularly interesting as thinking about queerness has pushed camp into the background in recent years. This is an interesting and exciting revival of the question of camp in contemporary queer performance.
The book considers and investigates the relationship between camp theory as an academic subject and the figure of the diva as one that utilizes and expresses camp in various ways. It seeks to establish how camp is appropriated or owned by the diva and how this impacts on and is in turn appropriated and owned by the audience.
Primary readership will be among researchers and educators working in the fields of cultural studies performance studies theatre studies music studies LGBTQ+ studies critical race studies as well as undergraduate students interested in these topics. It will be a useful classroom resource and addition to recommended reading lists.
The Music Diva Spectacle may have interest for more general readers with an interest in the subjects of the case studies but the main focus is on the academic market.
Material Media-Making in the Digital Age
There is now no shortage of media for us to consume from streaming services and video-on-demand to social media and everything else besides. This has changed the way media scholars think about the production and reception of media. Missing from these conversations though is the maker: in particular the maker who has the power to produce media in their pocket.
How might one craft a personal media-making practice that is thoughtful and considerate of the tools and materials at one's disposal? This is the core question of this original new book. Exploring a number of media-making tools and processes like drones and vlogging as well as thinking through time editing sound and the stream Binns looks out over the current media landscape in order to understand his own media practice.
The result is a personal journey through media theory history and technology furnished with practical exercises for teachers students professionals and enthusiasts: a unique combination of theory and practice written in a highly personal and personable style that is engaging and refreshing.
This book will enable readers to understand how a personal creative practice might unlock deeper thinking about media and its place in the world.
The primary readership will be among academics researchers and students in the creative arts as well as practitioners of creative arts including sound designers cinematographers and social media content producers.
Designed for classroom use this will be of particular importance for undergraduate students of film production and may also be of interest to students at MA level particularly on the growing number of courses that specifically offer a blend of theory and practice. The highly accessible writing style may also mean that it can be taken up for high school courses on film and production.
It will also be of interest to academics delivering these courses and to researchers and scholars of new media and digital cinema.
MEDIA
The first in the Media-Life-Universe trilogy this volume explores a transdisciplinary notion of media and technology exploring media as technology with special attention to its material historical and ecological ramifications. The authors reconceptualize media from environmental ecological and systems approaches drawing not only on media and communication studies but also philosophy sociology political science biology art computer science information studies and other disciplines.
Featuring a group of internationally known scholars this collection explores evolving definitions of media and how media technologies are transforming theory and practice. As the current media includes a wider and wider range of concepts products services and institutions the definition of media continues to be in a state of flux. What are media today? How is media studies evolving? How have technologies transformed communication and media theory and informed praxis? What are some of the futures of media?
The collection challenges traditional notions of media as well as concepts such as freedom of expression audience empowerment and participatory media and explores emergent media including transmedia virtual reality online games metatechnology remediation and makerspaces.
This is the first volume in the MEDIA • LIFE • UNIVERSE Trilogy. LIFE: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry 9781789382655 follows and builds upon this 2021 collection.
Mathias Spahlinger
The first book-length study in English of composer Mathias Spahlinger one of Germany’s leading practitioners of contemporary music. One of the most stimulating and provocative figures on the new music scene on Germany he has long been a touchstone for leftist ‘critical’ composition there yet his work has received very little attention in Anglophone scholarship until now.
Born in 1944 Spahlinger has risen only gradually to prominence in his native Germany and for many years was considered an outsider within the contemporary music scene. Yet his position as one of the most venerable exponents of post-WWII modernism in his homeland is now undeniable: his music is regularly performed he has received commissions from many of the major orchestras and new music groups in Germany and in 2014 he received the Großen Berliner Kunstpreis (Berlin Art Prize – Grand Prize) from the city’s Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts).
Spahlinger is however becoming increasingly known as a significant figure within later twentieth-century music – in 2015 a festival in Chicago focused exclusively on his music and he was a keynote speaker at a conference on Compositional Aesthetics and the Political at Goldsmiths University of London.
This new book provides an essential reference for scholars of new music and twentieth-century modernism. There are no other book-length studies of Spahlinger in English though there is a monograph and a book of essays in German and books of interviews. This original work promises a more critical perspective upon the composer and his aesthetics and political ideas compared to previous publications. The illustrations include musical examples.
Its primary market will be a specialist musicological readership including academics researchers and composers but the writing style such that it could be accessible also to undergraduates interested in the field. The discussion of aesthetic debates in post-war Germany and the interesting reading of the work of Jacques Rancière means that it could also have significant appeal across the disciplines of philosophy and critical theory.
Mediatization(s)
This new collection is the first book to bring together Latin American and European traditions of mediatization research integrating macro level theorization with applied observations of mediatization processes from a multidisciplinary perspective.
In the last decade several European and Latin American researchers have set a very solid theoretical corpus around mediatization. The book brings these two theoretical traditions close together for a dialogue: the Latin American sociosemiotic matrix consolidated by Eliseo Verón in the 1980s and the institutional and constructivist approaches developed in Europe. The main objective of the book is to explore and activate possible theoretical and applied exchanges between these approaches.
This book introduces the main theories and authors on mediatization from Europe and Latin America especially Brazil and Argentina in the last two decades. It historically and epistemologically frames these theories within the context of communication and media theories and pays particular attention to the opportunities generated by the exchanges between European and Latin American approaches. It is edited by scholars from Spain Argentina and the United Kingdom and includes contributors from universities in France Germany Switzerland Brazil Denmark and The Netherlands.
The handbook format including introductory comprehensive sections written by the editors and original texts signed by world leading researchers will make this a useful resource for researchers and students in the field.
The interdisciplinary approach displayed by the book has the potential to make it of interest not only to people working on communication or media studies but also in other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.
It will be of primary interest to academics scholars researchers undergraduate and postgraduate students particularly a growing population of Latin American postgraduate students in the Global North.
Fields of interest will include communication and media social sciences and social actors linked directly or indirectly to the transformation of the media landscape.
Music by Numbers
The music industries are fuelled by statistics: sales targets breakeven points success ratios royalty splits website hits ticket revenues listener figures piracy abuses and big data. Statistics are of consequence. They influence the music that consumers get to hear they determine the revenues of music makers and they shape the policies of governments and legislators. Yet many of these statistics are generated by the music industries themselves and their accuracy can be questioned. This original new book sets out to explore this shadowy terrain.
While there are books that offer guidelines about how the music industries work as well as critiques from academics about the policies of music companies this is the first book that takes a sustained look at these subjects from a statistical angle. This is particularly significant as statistics have not just been used to explain the music industries they are also essential to the ways that the industries work: they drive signing policy contractual policy copyright policy economic policy and understandings of consumer behaviour.
This edited collection provides the first in-depth examination of the use and abuse of statistics in the music industries. The international group of contributors are noted music business scholars and practitioners in the field. The book addresses five key areas in which numbers are employed: sales and awards; royalties and distribution; music piracy; music policy; and audiences and their uses of music. The authors address these subjects from a range of perspectives. Some of them test the veracity of this data and explore its tactical use by music businesses. Others are helping to generate these numbers: they are developing surveys and online projects and offer candid self-observations in this volume. There are also authors who have been subject to statistics; they deliver first-hand accounts of music industry reporting.
The digital age is inherently numerical. Within the music industries this has prompted new ways of tracking the usage and recompense of music. In addition it has generated new means of monitoring and engaging audience behaviour. It has also led to increased documentation of the trade. There is more reporting of the overall revenues of music industry sectors. There is also more engagement between industry and academia when it comes to conducting analyses and offering numerical recommendations to politicians.
The aim of this collection is to expose the culture and politics of data. Music industry statistics are all-pervasive yet because of this ubiquity they have been under-explored. This book provides new ways by which to learn music by numbers.
A timely examination of how data and statistics are key to the music industries. Widely held industry assumptions are challenged with data from a variety of sources and in an engaging lucid manner. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in how the music business uses and manipulates the data that digital technologies have made available.
Primary readership will be among popular music academics undergraduate and postgraduate students working in the fields of popular music studies music business media studies cultural studies sociology and creative industries. The book will also be of interest to people working within the music industries and to those whose work encounters industry statistics.
The Media-Democracy Paradox in Ghana
This original new book researches into the praxis of this democracy and its media delving into Ghana’s evolvement media practice leadership aspirations pressure group politics and ethnic and tribal cleavages. Written in accessible language it will provide valuable source material for readers interested in the development of a democratic culture.
A rich data source for students scholars and researchers on both the African continent and in the diaspora it examines the growing influence of social media in political discourse and provides an insightful analysis on debates surrounding political communication and its implications for strengthening democratic culture. Its intention is to challenge the intellectual rigour of scholars academics researchers and students. The analytical frames it offers are to generate intellectual discourses.
Provides an overview of the history of the press in Ghana and how that has shaped the current media landscape and draws attention to the growing influence of social media in political messages and debate. The historical analysis of the political situation of Ghana and its relationship to the press is informative comprehensive and stimulating to read. Ideas discussed are revealing and relevant to current discussions on the contributions of the media to the growth and development of democracy in Ghana in particular – and in Africa as a whole.
The unusual and highly original comparative analytic approach used here is in dealing with the media-democracy paradox through comments and analysis that challenges the orthodoxy of western idealism. The discussion of media and democracy with private and state media operating side-by-side in a multiparty democratic setting regulated by a constitution adds significantly to the wider field of knowledge on the media and democracy.
Primary audience will be academics scholars researchers and students – undergraduate and postgraduate – in the humanities and social sciences. Of particular relevance to those in media and communication studies political science journalism cultural studies postcolonial studies and historians whose research interests include Ghana. Also relevant to those with an interest in democracy and development to media advocacy institutions and policy makers and to media development experts.
Modern Melbourne
Melbourne founded in 1835 among marshes and beside a sluggish stream grew from wetlands into a world-class modern city. Drawing on a wide range of historical literary and artistic sources this book explores the cultural and environmental history of the city and its site. Tracing the city from its swampy beginnings in a squatter’s settlement nestled in the marshy delta of the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers Rod Giblett illuminates Melbourne through its visible structures and the invisible history of its site.
The book places Melbourne within an international context by comparing and contrasting it to other cities built on or beside wetlands including London New York Paris Los Angeles and Toronto. Further it is the first book to apply the work of European thinkers and writers on modernity and the modern city – such as Walter Benjamin and Peter Sloterdijk – to an analysis of Melbourne. Giblett considers the intertwining of nature and culture people and place and cities and wetlands in this bioregional and ecocultural analysis. Placing the city in its proper bioregional and international contexts Modern Melbourne provides a rich historical analysis of the cultural capital of Australia.